It's a Choice

As you might have guessed from my last post about Cave Dwelling, I've been discouraged lately. I don't know why and I don't know what caused it. But I DID realize I was in my cave and that I needed to get out. Fast.

So I tried. I made sure the Light was on. I spent extra time in God's Word reading, studying and really digging. Morning, noon and night often found me with time in the Bible. But I was still in my cave.

I have to tell you, I was baffled. I was hunting for sin, for poor decisions, anything that I could go back to and take care of. I even knew that this discouragement might be a mind game.

Finally one morning after my Bible reading I was going over my Sunday School lesson and the words were just bouncing off my eyeballs and I knew it was a great lesson because I had already gone over it once. So I closed the book and just sat. I told God where I was: in a world that had turned gray (and I hate gray!). I told Him how confused I was, and that's when I realized something.

During the day I'm discouraged and frustrated with my discouragement. Yet every morning I wake up singing praise to God. In those moments before being fully awake I was worshiping God. How could that be? It made me realize that even though God was seemingly being silent, I was still connecting with Him enough that I woke singing praise. My intentional immersion in God's Word was having an effect, even if I couldn't see it or even really feel it.

I knew God was guiding me, He promised He would, but I couldn't see His direction. I felt as though I was trudging through a bleak, gray world and that my ankles and feet were shrouded in the fog that hid God's directional arrow. How was I to know where God wanted me to step?

And that's when I stumbled on something I want to remember even though it's nothing new.

I know God is guiding me and when I can't see God's direction, I can step in faith. I don't need to see God's directional arrows or even the next step of the path. I don't need know where to turn. I just need to step and trust God. Yes, my world is gray right now. Yes, I hate gray. But I won't notice the gray so much if my eyes are fixed on the Light.

He is the Light at the end of this tunnel I'm in.For me, right now, discouragement is a choice of where I choose to look. Do I look at the gray I'm in or at the Light at the end of the tunnel? Do I just sit and wait it out or do I focus on the Light and just keep putting one foot in front of the other and trust?

Since Patty quit running from God's call on her life and surrendered her pen to Him, she's been happy. Life is never dull as she juggles being a wife, mom to a handful of kids and a couple of Capuchin monkeys, life on the road, and being a writer. As long as she's obeying God's leading, she figures that sanity is a novelty and not a necessity in the zoo she lives in. Patty clings to the promise that God will enable her to do what He asks of her, otherwise she would be living with the scaredy cats at the Funny Farm and not just occasionally visiting. You can find her on Instagram, too, where she daily sneaks in a few sane moments.